Worthy
by SomewhereApart
Summary: A little post-ep piece for 5.02, The Price. After a tumultuous day in Camelot, Robin and Regina share a bit of quiet time.


His heart beats beneath the press of her ear, an easy lub-dub, lub-dub, steady and strong, and she has never heard a better sound. (That's not true – the deep belly-giggles of her son when he was small, _mama_ , and less than a year ago _Mom!_ – but this comes close.) He's alive, thank God, alive, and even though she saw him healed, watched with her own eyes as Emma's magic brought him back to her (she feels guilt, intense, twisting her insides when she lingers on it, and so she doesn't, not now, not tonight), she finds she has to keep checking.

She lies here, in a large bed with sheets that are soft by the standards of this realm but don't hold a candle to Egyptian cotton, her head cushioned on his chest, and she listens. Lub-dub, lub dub, lub-dub. Steady and strong. Feels the rise of his chest as he breathes in, the soft fall as he breathes out, rise in, fall out, again and again. Comforting. Her hand rests over his belly, the linen of his nightshirt warm between his skin and her palm, covering the place where just hours ago (and barely even that), he'd been seeping blood and life in a tide she'd been powerless to stop. Because of her. Because of something she'd done – carnage she'd wrought and revelled in, all those years ago. Her stomach pitches, nausea and disgust (she's disgusting, he shouldn't be here with her, he should go far away, very far away, but she won't ask him to, she can't, too selfish, she's too selfish, too greedy for his touch, his smile, his kiss, and more than that, his love, his support, his... everything) rising when she thinks too hard on what she almost cost him.

The room is near-silent, just the occasional crackle of the logs in the fire, the soft rustle of sheets against pajamas and skin. If she wasn't trying so hard not to think on guilt, and selfishness, and lingering fear, she'd probably be drowsy. As it is, she's surprised Robin hasn't dropped off yet – magically revived or not, his ordeal has taken a toll on him. Left him sluggish and weak. But his hand is in her hair, fingers tracing from her temple, down behind her ear, along her neck. Again, again, again. Slow, lazy passes that raise occasional goosebumps over her skin. Almost as comforting as the beat of his heart.

Another thing she's too selfish to sacrifice for his safety. She'll regret it later, when fate rips him away from her. When something she does or did finally gets him killed, she'll tear herself to pieces over having been unwilling to trade gentle strokes through her hair for life and breath and blood rushing safely through his veins.

He shouldn't love her. He shouldn't, and she wants to tell him that, but she _can't_. The words sit on her tongue, heavy and cold like a stone, rendering her as mute as her magically silenced sister.

When he turns his head and presses a kiss to her brow, her heart cracks and splits and spills open for him. Again. For the hundredth or thousandth time. Love too much and too bright to be contained in something as small and dark as her heart surging and suffusing her with warmth.

Regina turns her nose toward his chest, breathes in the smell of him. Unfamiliar soap, sandalwood oil, and a hint of sweat. He doesn't smell like _Robin_ , like grass and pine and fresh air, and she finds the change unsettling. Disappointing.

It has something clawing at her insides, a need for reassurance, and she presses her hand harder against his skin, then wonders if he's still tender and releases the pressure, fisting the soft material instead.

"'re you alright?" There's a sleepy slur to his words, but the rasp of his voice is another balm to her troubled mind, and so she nods, and flattens her hand again.

But she's weak, terribly so, weak and needy, so she asks in a whisper, "Can I see you?" She tilts her face up, gets an eyeful of stubbled jaw and frowning lips and not much else. "I– I need to see that you're okay."

He shifts then, somehow manages to draw her back from him far enough to see each other's faces without going cross-eyed, while not losing a breath of space between tangled legs and torsos.

"I'm fine, my love." His dimples wink out as he gives her a smile of reassurance, and then a too-soft kiss for good measure. She nods, she knows this, she saw him healed, but there's a part of her (Daniel's body limp and lifeless in her arms and true love's kiss is a lie they tell to children, the droning tone of the heart monitor telling her that Henry has drawn his last breath and she's the one who stole it, _You would have been enough_ , and Daddy's heart still warm in her palm) that cannot believe she's cheated death this time, and he must see it, because he adds, "But you can see anything you'd like." Those fingers through her hair again, crown, and temple, around her ear to her nape. "Always."

Regina lets out a breath of relief, and bares him with crawling fingers, bunching the linen of his nightshirt up and up and up in her grasp, both of them shifting slightly to accommodate and ease. When she has it all rucked to his belly, she pushes down the blankets and leans over him, fingertips running along his skin. He shivers, and so does she, but for different reasons entirely. She can feel it beneath her touch, the magic, an invisible scar he'll wear forever, the mark of a man healed. Emma's magic feels different than Rumple's had, less cloying, less swampy. The sticky softness of a spider's web, gossamer and silky, deceptive. The kind of thing you could crawl into and curl up in and find yourself trapped and devoured before you knew what had happened. It makes Regina flare with gooseflesh again, makes her uncomfortable (she'd begged this out of Emma, this seductive darkness, she'd asked for it, and she prays her request doesn't have that very same darkness spooling and snaring around Emma right this second), so she draws her hand away, caresses the center of his belly instead. Long, lazy trails across the warmth of his skin, the parts that don't pulse and itch with power.

"Better?" he asks, and she gives him a soft _Yes_ , lets him draw her in close again, pillows her head against his chest. Lub-dub, lub-dub, rise and fall. Steady and strong.

And almost still, almost gone.

"You shouldn't have done that," she whispers. Cannot help it, just like she cannot cease her languid exploration of the bared skin they haven't bothered to re-cover.

"Shouldn't have done what?" Fingers in her hair, and then down her back, and, oh, that's nice...

"Tackled Percival."

His hand stills, fingertips finding a home in the dip of her spine.

"He drew his sword on you," Robin tells her, as if she's forgotten.

"He had his reasons."

It's not until he stiffens that she realizes how loose he'd been, how relaxed, but he goes tense beneath her, his other hand lifting to tip her chin up until he can lock his gaze with hers. "No," he tells her, but he doesn't know, hadn't heard the story she had, the tale of her own malicious cruelty.

"He did." But she doesn't want to argue that; it's not what matters anyway. "And I have magic. I could have stopped him."

He's not pleased by her evasion, nostrils flaring as he presses his lips into a thin line. But when he exhales, all he says is, "Why didn't you?"

"Harder to aim magic when there are two bodies brawling," her voice drops even lower, a bare whisper, "one of which is precious to you." Her trailing touch pauses to squeeze lightly at his hip, and he presses his chin to her brow, his beard tickling her skin, a heavy sigh ruffling the hair at her crown.

His lips brush against her as he murmurs, "You're precious to me, as well, milady. And any man – or woman, or otherwise – who wishes to do you harm will do so over my dead body."

"I'm not worth your dead body," she insists, lifting up slightly, enough to frown down at him, because doesn't he see? She's not someone people should die for, not someone they should sell their souls away for, she is too wretched, too stained with darkness, she is a poison, she's–

But he doesn't see, he doesn't see at all, because he's lifting his hand to cup her head, fingers in her hair again, and telling her with too much certainty and too much love, "I'll be the judge of that."

Regina shakes her head, her hair pulling slightly in his grasp. "But–"

"It's my choice, Regina. Loving you. I chose you, and I meant it. I know the woman you are, and were, and I'm quite aware that your life isn't one free of peril, but mine never has been either. And I'm not a man who can sit idly by while someone is threatened, least of all the woman I love." His fingers tighten in her hair, giving it a gentle tug and urging her down to kiss him. It's meant to be soothing, she knows, but self-loathing is difficult to soothe, even with soft kisses and declarations of love. There's little to be done to ease the sting of the truth.

"I don't want you to die for me," she insists when their lips part. "Promise me."

Robin's brows lift up. "No."

"Robin–"

"Would you promise me the same?"

"That's not the point."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not–" _worth it_ , is what she wants to say, but she clamps her jaw shut instead. He won't let her get away with it. He doesn't believe it. He believes in _her_ , in her goodness, in her potential. She could argue until she was blue in the face, and Robin would never accept that he may be worth saving but she is not. Not for the price of his life. Loving her has made him foolish, and arguing with a fool is like arguing with a wall, and if the increasingly smug smirk on his face is any indication, he knows it. Knows exactly what she's realizing now: she's lost this argument before it's even begun.

That jerk.

She scowls, bites, "You're frustrating, you know that?" and Robin chuckles, a warm rumble that seeps into her bones makes her heart do that thing again.

"I believe the word you're looking for is 'right,' Your Majesty," he taunts, his palm coasting her back again, a good firm caress that loosens her resolve even further.

"I wouldn't go that far, _thief_ ," she taunts back, surly at being bested (at giving in, really, even though she still believes she's right, and he's wrong), but he's grinning at her now, and that smile is infectious, spreading to her own face and betraying her into an insuppressible curve of lips.

Robin _Mm_ s, and reels her in again, another kiss, this one slower, warmer, lingering until she relaxes into the simple pleasure of his mouth, his blunt nails scratching lightly against her scalp, his stubble rubbing pleasantly against her chin.

His unerring devotion to her may be wrong, but _this_ , this is right. His mouth against hers, the wet warmth of his tongue, the soft sound he makes in the back of his throat (the way she answers in kind without thought or intention). And since she is too selfish to force him away, and he is too foolish to go, she tells herself to enjoy this, the here-and-now, the alive-and-well. To kiss, and be kissed, and focus on the way her pulse stutters at a light scrape of teeth on her full lower lip, and the texture of his skin as she skates a hand down the top of his thigh and back up the inside, sliding back to decent territory as she feels his skin grow warmer the further north she coasts. He exhales, the faint scent of wine washing against her lips and chin, their brows pressing as they break for breath.

He's not the only one breathless, and when she licks her lips they're kiss-swollen and spit-dampened, and maybe it doesn't matter how unworthy she is of all this. Maybe for a little while, she can pretend her life is as simple as a warm and willing man in her bed.

Or maybe not, because he doesn't move to kiss her again, not beyond a soft buss of lips, anyway. He settles further into the mattress with a satisfied sigh, and urges her closer with an arm around her shoulders.

He looks sleepy, she thinks. They should sleep.

So she rests her head on his chest again, ignores the initial stirrings of arousal, and focuses once again on the lub-dub-lub-dub (faster now, she thinks with a smile), and the rise and the fall.

She doesn't close her eyes, not quite yet, and she doesn't stop touching him. Can't. He's alive, and well, and warm, and smooth, and hers, hairs tickling her palm as she skates higher up on belly and chest, skin cooler around his navel, warmer where hip joins thigh. She likes this, being able to touch him. To simply touch him, no rush, no scandal, to learn the contours of him, the places that make muscles tense reflexively, the pressure that makes them relax again.

She watches her hand, hypnotized, mesmerized by its lazy wandering, and as she runs it down toward his thigh again, she notices.

He's half-hard.

 _Not so sleepy, after all_ , she muses with a secret little smile, letting her touch slow and gentle as she sneaks toward him. Giving him a chance to stop her.

He doesn't.

His belly clenches when her fingertips trace the length of him, her touch feather-light, his thigh twitching. His skin is soft here, so soft, silky and so warm. His thigh twitches again as she continues whisper-soft caresses, and she can hear his heavy swallow, before he murmurs, "Tickles..."

Regina's cheeks flush and she wraps slim fingers around him. Her "Sorry..." is soft as the hissing of the fire.

"S'alright," he sighs as she draws her grip up and then down, still slow, still lazy. He's still spongy in her grasp, but she can feel him growing thicker, harder. Watches his cock fill and stiffen, and bites down on her lip as she grows warmer at the thought.

She wants him.

They haven't had time since she got him back, what with the author, and the alternate universe, and then Emma and now all this. She hasn't been with him since that night in her vault, months ago, and her body is reminding her suddenly, with heat and a low-down throb. A possessive sort of satisfaction at the sight of him now thick and ready in her hand.

But he almost died today, and he's still sluggish and a little weak, and sex would be taxing, she thinks. So she'll wait another night or two to slake her thirst for him. Tonight will be just for Robin. He'll lie back and be pampered, and come on his belly and her fingers and then they'll sleep.

So when his hand moves down her back, grasps her rear and squeezes, his thigh shifting to wedge itself more tightly between hers, she shakes her head.

"Don't worry about me," she urges. "Not tonight. This is for you."

"But–"

"Nope." Regina lifts her head, gives him her best no-nonsense look. "You're convalescing. You're not to lift a finger."

"I think I can handle, well," he smirks and her heart double-taps, " _lifting a finger_ or two."

Regina snickers at his terrible attempt at innuendo, and leans in to press a kiss to his lips. "Not tonight," she repeats. "Queen's orders."

"Regina–"

"You won earlier," she informs primly, ignoring the way his brows rise at her rare admission of loss, "I get this one."

"One would argue you're not getting much."

Regina quirks one brow, resumes the steady stroking she'd let go lax as she'd argued her case. Robin's lips part, his lashes fluttering at the little surge of pleasure when her thumb swipes across his foreskin. "If the tables were turned," she muses smugly, "Would you say you'd get nothing?"

"No," he concedes, voice thick. Good.

"That's what I thought."

"Smug," he accuses with no heat whatsoever, his eyelids falling shut, Adam's apple bobbing with another swallow.

"You bet," Regina smirks, leaning in and pressing a kiss to the tip of his chin, before murmuring, "Now you just relax, and let me..."

Robin nods, and acquiesces, and Regina lets her head rest on his shoulder again, slows the pace of her hand to something torturously snail-like, but firm. More colors to learn, she thinks, as the new pace has him letting out a groan of protest but also has his breath going deeper. She wonders what else he likes – never had the chance to learn before. Not really, not like this.

She's going to now.

He likes her thumb across the head of him, moans softly whenever she peppers the steady pulling of her hand with the extra rub. When his fingers are splaying and contracting against her back in time with each stroke up and down, she shifts her attention, focusing just on the head, grasping him lightly and stroking his foreskin gently back, and then up again, squeezing a little as she goes, and Robin actually whimpers, good God, _whimpers_ , his hand gripping at her hip and clenching.

"Too much?" she whispers, and his voice is all breath and throat and sex when he answers _No_. It goes straight to her middle, has her shifting slightly to press more tightly against his thigh after all.

"But only – mm – only for a little while...Or it will be."

Regina nods, but she doesn't stop, swipes her thumb across the bare tip of him on the next down stroke and gets a more fervent moan for her efforts. She chuckles, and does it again, again, drinking down his _haa_ and _oh, love_ , and she'd been about to ask him if he likes this, but it seems a silly question under the circumstances.

She watches his breath go shallow and short, listens to the way his moans go quick and urgent, his muscles tensing but not in a way that smacks of release, and now every swipe of her thumb comes away slick and slippery.

She switches to longer strokes again, caresses down to the base of him then grips and fists up and down, faster this time than before, but not yet what she'd call urgent.

Robin lets out a low, relieved groan of her name, and Regina grins.

"Wicked woman," he gasps, and just then she feels it – wicked, but not in the way she usually does. In the way she thinks she ought to – womanly, and powerful, with a man at her mercy in the best of ways. Her man at her mercy in the best of ways.

The thought has her chuckling again (it's more of a giggle, but she _does not_ giggle, not even with him, not even during this), and shifting against him until she can find his mouth with hers.

Robin meets her eagerly, kisses her hot and wet, and pours all the tension she's not allowing him to work off into the meeting of tongue and lip and teeth. His hand is on her ass again now, tugging her up a little, fitting her against his upper thigh and kneading her rear and she wishes she was naked from the waist down, too, as she presses and rocks into firm muscle.

His hand is encouraging, pressing, guiding – when it's not gone slack from a shiver of pleasure or sheer distraction – and before long she's given up all pretense of not getting off from this, moaning into his mouth as she grinds against his thigh, suddenly not so bothered by the friction of her nightdress against her increasingly sensitive clit.

A groan of pleasure has Robin breaking their kiss (it had gone sloppy anyway, not that that's a bad thing), biting his lip and tilting his head back into the pillow, and she's hit with a suckerpunch of appreciation for how _attractive_ he is, good God, just _look at him_. The action bares his neck to her, and she can't resist taking advantage, leaning in and nipping over his pulse, chasing the love bites with little swirls of her tongue (it's a maneuver he particularly likes, that much she'd already learned before everything went to hell).

When he moans her name again, she can feel the vibration of it against her tongue and grinds harder against him, that delicious friction starting to slicken as she gets wetter and wetter. The fleeting thought that she has to sleep in this nightdress after all this is over has her finally giving in and releasing her grip on him (the sound he lets out is the very definition of bereft, and has her snickering breathlessly).

"I just need to–" She shimmies and wriggles, tugs the material up around her waist. Robin catches on to what she's up to and reaches for her, pulling the fabric up higher, but she shakes her head, murmurs, "This is for you. Just relax."

" _I_ want you naked," he argues. "Haven't seen you in bloody ages."

Oh. Well, that seems reasonable.

"You, too," she urges, and with minimal twisting and tugging, they're skin-to-skin, naked and together for the first time in far too long. He groans as he palms her ass again, grasping at her hair and pulling her down to his mouth (she was already on her way) as she situates herself against his thigh and rocks, slick flesh against warm skin. Oh, that's so much better.

"Gods," Robin gasps, breathing her air and pressing her harder against him. "You're slippery as soap, love."

"Mmhmm," she breathes, rocking again, and then he's cheating, sneaking, abandoning her hair to give her hips a little push and trying to worm his fingers between them. "No," she gasps, swatting at him and rutting her crotch more tightly to his leg. "This is for you."

"But you're–"

"For _you_ ," she repeats, grasping his wrist and forcing it back to the pillow beside his head. He tries to argue again and she looks hard at him (as hard as she can manage, naked and flushed and tousled), giving him her best Stern Mom look. "Robin."

He gives up the fight then, grasping her thigh and nodding, but looking none too pleased about the whole thing. "Bossy," he mutters, and then his lips tighten in the tell-tale twitch of trying to hide a smile.

She grins down at him, leaning in and nudging the tip of her nose against his, dropping a peck there, and then his lips. "I'm sure it's just terrible for you," she taunts, releasing his wrist and reaching for his cock again, giving him a lazy stroke that makes his answering, _You've no idea_ hitch in the middle. "Mmhmm." Doubtful. What a terrible liar; he's not even trying. And she loves it, grins at him, and rubs and rubs, rocks and grinds, and soon he's not giving her any more sass.

Soon, he's kneading her rear, and cupping one of her breasts, catching her nipple between thumb and forefinger and beginning to squeeze and roll and tug, and oh _that's_ cheating, that's, oh, _oh_...

She sighs his name, presses her brow to his, moves her hips faster, needy, greedy, oh God...

"Faster, m'love," he rumbles against her lips and she breathes for him to show her, losing that delicious teasing touch on her breast as his hand moves to cover hers, to show her just how he likes to be touched. It's rougher than she'd been handling him, a tighter grip, a faster stroke, a rhythm somehow more fluid, practiced, but she picks it up quickly and soon he's groaning, kissing her, sloppy and wet and breathless, teeth catching her lip as his fingers find her breast again and she's grinding harder, faster, oh God, oh, _oh_ , she needs, she needs him, needs to come, she's so wet, sliding slippery against his thigh, moaning, teeth clacking as they both go for a nibble at the same time but it doesn't slow them in the slightest, and he's close now, and she's close now, and suddenly it isn't enough, this rocking friction, she wants _him_ , wants to come with him inside her, wants to feel him, thick, wants to come hard on the fullness of him _inside her_ , and this is supposed to be for him, but she can still do all the work, he can just lie there, and _mm_...

She scrambles atop him, slings a leg over his hips and rises up, grasping him and gasping, "I'm sorry – I need – is this–?"

She doesn't expect a protest, figures he'll take his victory in this, too, but he stills her with a firm hold on her hip and shakes his head.

Regina frowns. "Are you still tender?"

"It'll be over far too quickly," he grimaces, that hand on her hip sliding down to rub his thumb across her clit and her jaw drops, a high sound of pleasure popping out before she can stop it.

"That's fine; I'm clo- _ohh_ -ose," she excuses, pushing at his hand, but he won't be deterred.

"No, let me," he urges, fingers slipping down and down and _in_ , and _oh_. "I want to last when I have you again."

She'd argue, but he has very good fingers, very _talented_ fingers, dexterous and deft, and they're _doing_ things inside her, pressing and searching, two of them, and then three, because she's soaked and ready, so ready, oh God, he's going to make her– "I want t-to come when you're – ins-sss-ide – _ah!_ – me."

She thinks she hears an _Mmhmm_ , from general region of his pillow, but he's just found _that_ spot, and her eyes have screwed shut, a cry spilling from her as she feels pleasure flush out in waves from the steady thump of his fingers.

"Just there?" he rasps and she nods eagerly, one hand planted against the headboard, the other fisting the pillow near his head, and he moves faster, harder, has her stiffening and shouting and thanking God for thick masonry and archer's fingers, and then his other hand – oh _God_ – her clit – he rubs and no, no, no–

"Inside!" she squeaks. "Please! I'm– _Robin!_ "

She's wound tight as a clock, and then she's empty and trembling, peeling her eyes open to the sight of him beneath her, his lip bit in concentration (she wants to bite it _for_ him; does he have any idea what it does to her when he does that?), and then he's bumping against her, solid, notching just where she needs him before there are damp fingers on her other hip, guiding her down, filling her, her thighs splaying wider as she lowers herself, and the noise she lets out is practically pornographic, a thick and throaty _guh_. She's just on the edge, and arousal has her tight, snug around him, makes him feel even thicker, makes her feel even fuller, his name a desperate whimper on her lips.

He's not faring much better, gasping, "Gods, you feel..." and gripping hard at her hips before giving her a stroke, up her ribs and down her thighs and back to where he started. She takes that as assent to move, and oh does she ever.

She fucks him, hard, takes him in quick deep passes, one, two, three, and then his thumb is on her clit and it's only two more before she's coming, hard, shouting her pleasure to the stones and losing her rhythm, but Robin hadn't been wrong in his insistence that he's more than capable of sex, his hands grasping her hips, stilling them as he takes control of their coupling and pounds up into her again, again, firm, sharp raps that have her orgasm spinning out, lingering, incoherent pleasure tumbling from her lips, ecstasy dragging her nails across her collar for purchase, for grounding, for _something_ , and leaving bright pink trails in their wake.

She thinks she might come _again_ , has the delirious thought that she's headed for another peak of pleasure, but then he buries himself deep and cries out, holding hard to her hips, his beautiful face screwing up in a mask of pleasure as he spills inside her, and then they're both breathless and trembling. Panting and sweat-slicked, weak-limbed as she bends to kiss and kiss him, gasping for air every few seconds. His palms rub her thighs, her ribs, her arms, his mouth haphazard and delicious.

She lifts off him a moment later (knees creaky and sore, she's not as young as she once was), and collapses against his chest, his skin cool with drying sweat, her thighs slippery with him, his heart beneath her ear, lub-dub-lub-dub-lub-dub-lub-dub, quick and labored, and _alive_.

She settles her hand over it and sighs, murmurs, "I love you," and hears him echo her.

Regina falls asleep within moments, pressed against her lover, holding him close, listening to the evidence of life in his chest and feeling the pulsing of her own in every limb and artery.

She's at peace, for now. It may not last, but it'll hold her through the night. And right now, that's enough.


End file.
